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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197260">The Only Exception</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bow_of_Artemis/pseuds/Bow_of_Artemis'>Bow_of_Artemis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fix-It, M/M, POV Alternating, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Song: The Only Exception (Paramore), Songfic, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Stanley Uris Lives, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and im not even sorry, because I said so, fuck you stephen king, like its so cheesy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:03:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,439</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197260</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bow_of_Artemis/pseuds/Bow_of_Artemis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>And that was the day that I promised<br/>I'd never sing of love<br/>If it does not exist,<br/>but darlin' you are, the only exception<br/>-<br/>A songfic based on Paramore’s The Only Exception about a love that spans decades</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak &amp; Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Only Exception</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was meant to be a drabble but it ended up being much longer than I anticipated oops. Thanks again to my beta who made sure this random idea actually got put out into the world. </p>
<p>CW: mentions of cancer, drugs, and alcohol</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>When I was younger<br/>
I saw my daddy cry<br/>
And curse at the wind<br/>
He broke his own heart<br/>
And I watched<br/>
As he tried to reassemble it</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie Kaspbrak was 5 years old when his father died. He didn’t understand why his father never came out to play with him anymore or what his mother meant when she told him that he was never coming back. As he grew up, he could only remember his father in flashes. Memories of his mother trying to avert his eyes when his father was throwing up or his hair falling out in chunks. He never knew his father as the energetic young man he once was, so excited to have a son he could show the world to. And he never knew his mother as the woman who loved him, not yet broken by the pain of diseases and loss.</p>
<p>Maybe things could have been different if his father hadn’t smoked that first cigarette and quickly gotten hooked on those little scrolls of tobacco that painted his lungs black with each breath. Maybe then Eddie would have been able to remember his father as the man he used to be. The man who had life behind his eyes rather than the man who left one day and never came home. It was a few years before Eddie was even old enough to understand death and the irreparable hole it left behind in his life.</p>
<p>If Frank had just held out for a few years longer. Long enough for Eddie to understand what it meant to be loved healthily and unconditionally. To understand what a parent’s love is meant to feel like. Long enough for him to see his mother and father together before she became a broken shell of her former self. Then things might have been different.</p>
<p>But he didn’t. Frank Kaspbrak died in February of 1982 and that’s when everything went wrong.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>And my momma swore<br/>
That she would never let herself forget<br/>
And that was the day that I promised<br/>
I'd never sing of love<br/>
If it does not exist, </em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>After that fateful day, Sonia Kaspbrak was a changed woman. She would not let anything happen to her son; she would not be able to bear it if she lost him to disease like she lost her husband. And Eddie was young enough to not understand how she’d changed. In the beginning, she had begged and pleaded the doctors and the pharmacists to give her as many medications as they could. She just needed something to make her feel safe. But they all refused, saying that they couldn’t prescribe medications to a perfectly healthy young boy. But that wasn’t good enough for her, she couldn’t just let him live recklessly like all the other children. So, when Mr. Keene told her that he could give her some placebo medications to help ease her anxieties, she eagerly agreed. Hoarding the sugar pills because the broken part of her brain had convinced her that they would protect Eddie. That something was better than nothing. And every year since the death of Frank Kaspbrak, Eddie had been taking placebo medications and Sonia started to forget that he wasn’t sick at all. Started to forget that she was just trying to keep him healthy and instead had begun to convince both herself and Eddie that he was sick and weak and couldn’t live without her guiding hand. And that was the environment that Eddie had to grow up in.</p>
<p>As Eddie grew up, all he knew was the smothering love of his mother. His brain grew up feeling suffocated and eventually, he convinced himself that that was what love felt like. That love felt like being locked away in his home, not allowed to leave other than for school because he was too fragile to go anywhere else. That it felt like downing a handful of pills every single day without even knowing what they were supposed to do. That it felt like having an inhaler pressed in his hand every time he went to leave the house because his lungs were weak, and he couldn’t breathe without it. (It wasn’t until many years later that he finally understood that above all else Sonia needed Eddie to be able to breathe because that was the exact thing that stole Frank away from her).</p>
<p>Eddie was young and naïve and believed everything his mother told him. He believed that he was weak and sick and needed his mother to take care of him. He was terrified of anything that could get him dirty because diseases were the most dangerous thing the world had to offer. Sonia ingrained this fear deep within his psyche ever since he was young and the effects of this would echo throughout the rest of his life.</p>
<p>Finally, when Eddie was 13 years old and found out that he wasn’t sick at all, his entire world tilted on its axis. He faced a monster so much scarier than any disease and figured out that he was actually so much stronger than he gave himself credit for. He felt invincible and that he could do anything because he was <em>not </em>sick. But as freeing as this discovery was it also crumbled the world around him. Because his mother was not the woman she claimed to be. She did not have his best interests at heart, instead <em>she </em>was the one who made him feel weak and sick and unable to live without her. He yelled and screamed at her as well as out into the world because his rage was uncontainable. But the damage had already been done, Sonia had weaselled her way into his mind and what he believed love to be. And without the memory of how to be brave, he didn’t stand a chance.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>but darlin'</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Except, there was someone who made him feel the way he was meant to feel. Someone who allowed him to feel free and happy and strong and not like the sick little boy Sonia wanted him to be. As much as he acted like Richie drove him up the wall (and in all honestly, sometimes it wasn’t an act at all), he pushed Eddie in a way nobody else in his life did. Richie made him yell and laugh and just feel so much all at once that it made him forget that little hole that he filled with fear and pills. Richie was one of the dirtiest people Eddie knew, with almost no regard for personal hygiene until much too old. But despite that, he was one of the only people Eddie allowed to get close to him. He loved all of the Losers dearly, but he sure wasn’t climbing into the hammock with anyone else. He wasn’t scared of Richie getting him sick and that was a feeling so freeing that Eddie chased it constantly.</p>
<p>Richie was Eddie’s best friend, there was no doubt in his mind about it. They seemed like an unlikely pair and their relationship was so antagonistic that people on the outside looking in wondered why they ever even hung out together. But Eddie wouldn’t have it any other way. He felt so happy and free whenever he yelled at Richie for some awful your mom joke because he was finally able to express all of the loud emotions that had been building up under his skin that his mother had restrained. He never yelled as much as he did when he was with Richie, but he also never laughed as much, never smiled as much, never felt as much as he did when they were together. And so, Eddie spent as much time as possible with Richie, grateful that Richie didn’t seem to mind him latching on in the slightest. Sonia hated Richie and that only made Eddie want to spend more time with him to defy his mother in any way he could.</p>
<p>As Richie and Eddie grew up together, they only kept getting closer, slowly becoming less of Richie and Eddie, two boys, and more RichieandEddie, a package deal. Richie would climb in through Eddie’s window as many nights as he pleased and Eddie never complained, always happy to see him. Even as they got older and Eddie’s twin bed became far too small to hold the both of them as growing teenage boys, neither of them talked about it. They just kept doing the same thing they had always done and for some reason Eddie never wanted to stop. He took any opportunity he could to hang out with Richie, to talk to him, to touch him.</p>
<p>Eddie may not have had the words or understanding to express what he felt but he had slowly fallen into a love so deep, so unconditional, that it would always stay with him. Even as he forgot and fell back into his old routines. As he married Myra who had the same familiar, smothering love as his mother. As he forgot what it meant to be brave, just under his skin, just out of reach, was this big, energetic love waiting to be set free.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Maybe I know, somewhere<br/>
Deep in my soul<br/>
That love never lasts<br/>
And we've got to find other ways<br/>
To make it alone<br/>
But keep a straight face</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Richie Tozier was a man with too much love to give and nowhere to put it. He figured out he was gay when he was still so young but knew that there was no way he could tell anyone or be open about it. Not in Derry, at least. But he was lucky enough that the boy he fell hard and fast for always welcomed him with open arms. And even though he knew that he would never, <em>ever</em>, tell him; he carved his feelings into the Kissing Bridge to let the universe know without actually telling anyone. And that was more than enough.</p>
<p>But then he grew up and through no fault of his own, he forgot. But the one thing he just couldn’t forget was the fact he was gay and the instinctual fear that came with that. He moved all the way across the country to live in LA and there he was young and anonymous. And that gave him just enough bravery to put himself out there. Nobody knew who he was, and LA was a place about as far away from Derry as he could get, both literally and metaphorically, not that he remembered where he was running from.</p>
<p>He had a short string of boyfriends. All of them shorter than him with short brown hair, wide brown eyes, and a spitfire personality. He just figured he had a very specific type. But every single relationship was doomed from the beginning, all of the men eventually growing sick of his inability to be seen out in public together, even in the most innocuous situations. The thought of being seen out in public together and having people look at them made Richie nauseated and jittery. There was a primal fear ingrained right into his bloodstream that nobody he met could make go away, or even simply mute. But Richie kept trying because his subconscious was telling him that there was somebody who could do that. Somebody who made him feel brave enough to feel like himself and allow others to see him that way too.</p>
<p>Nobody he met could ever fit quite right. And so, he was always left alone with all this love to give but nowhere to put it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>And I've always lived like this<br/>
Keeping a comfortable, distance<br/>
And up until now<br/>
I had sworn to myself that I'm content<br/>
With loneliness</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But then Richie got more well known and he drowned out all of his feelings with drugs and alcohol. It was much easier to feel numb than like himself. He stopped dating because that was far too risky. Instead he resigned himself to a stream of unsatisfying hook-ups and hand jobs in club bathrooms by a stream of nameless, faceless men. Choosing loneliness was less painful than facing the reality that everyone he had ever tried to open himself up to had left him behind. (Everyone he could remember at least.)</p>
<p>When his agent suggested getting him ghostwriters Richie readily agreed. He could coast through life and get money from just making people laugh without having to do any of the hard work. His image was curated into one idolised by right-wing dudebros and Richie laughed at the irony that the men laughing and giving him all his money were the same group of men who would try and kill him if they knew the truth of who he was. But he didn’t care who the people giving him money were, they funded his unhealthy addictions and that was the only purpose of his career he had anymore.</p>
<p>He allowed himself to be branded as a womanizer despite never having slept with a woman in his life. He told obscene jokes and silently apologised to women as he did, apologising for being part of the problem. But it was still miles easier than telling the truth. Lying didn’t make him choke and burn with shame, even though he knew he should feel much worse about it than he did. Being a womanizer also allowed him to escape from the reality of his plethora of failed relationships, never mind the fact they were with men. He had the image of a man who was never going to settle down because he never <em>chose </em>to, not because it was his fault.</p>
<p>He went through life feeling unfulfilled and unloved and eventually he forgot that he had any love to give at all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Because none of it was ever worth the risk</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But there was still some part of his mind, some part buried under layers and layers of repression that told him that there was still someone out there. That if he just kept looking, he would find someone who would make him feel brave. Someone who would look at him and see him as Richie Tozier, Certified Mess, and still want to stay by his side. Someone who would make him feel empowered to break out of the vicious cycle of fear that controlled his life. But that didn’t happen until he was 40 years old and received a phone call from Mike Hanlon.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>But, you are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception</em>
</p>
<p>Mike’s call made Richie feel absolutely terrified, but there was a magnetic pull that made him pack his bags in a rush and hop on the first flight to Bangor. It wasn’t until he walked into the Jade of the Orient and saw Eddie aggressively listed his allergies to an underpaid waitress that he understood.</p>
<p><em>“Oh. There you are,”</em> was his first coherent thought and as soon as he and Eddie locked eyes across the room Richie felt everything click into place. It was like he had been walking around life as a puzzle missing its final piece and getting Eddie back made him finally feel whole again. He realised that Eddie had been the person he had been chasing his entire life because the overwhelming amount of love he held for him when he was younger had spilled over and altered his entire adult life. He realised every failed boyfriend he had in his 20s were just imitations of Eddie, but no matter how close the physical resemblance, none of them made him feel <em>alive </em>in the way Eddie did. Like there was a livewire constantly thrumming underneath his skin that made him want to scream out every thought that had ever crossed his mind. It was exhilarating finally feeling this was again, feeling this renewed sense of bravery.</p>
<p>The next few days passed in a blur, Richie finally remembering the root of his fear of being gay. Fuck Henry Bowers, but especially fuck Pennywise for using it against him. But maybe, just maybe, now that he knew where his fear came from, he could finally start to move on. Start to live authentically for once in his goddamn life. All he needed was a reason, and that reason was an (allegedly) 5’9” gremlin named Eddie Kaspbrak.</p>
<p>When Eddie tried to back out of the fight, Richie had grabbed him and looked right into his eyes to tell him “you’re braver than you think,” because Eddie <em>had </em>to be brave. Eddie made Richie brave without even realising. He had overcome so much when he was younger, so much more than Richie would have been able to handle and was still a tiny ball of energy. And Richie <em>loved him for it. </em>He was the one person in the whole world who made Richie believe he could be brave too.</p>
<p>That was why it was so awful when Richie was forced to see what it would have been like if he had to lose him. He had to watch himself be dragged away from his favourite person in the whole world and when he was finally released from the stranglehold of the deadlights, he knew he couldn’t let that happen. As soon as Eddie bent over him, face full of glee, Richie pulled him down, flush against his chest, and used all of his strength to roll them both over. He watched as the giant claw of Pennywise smashed into the rocks just inches away from where they lay. He was <em>not </em>letting Eddie Kaspbrak die any time soon.</p>
<p>Eventually, Richie was able to tell the others what he had seen in the deadlights about how to kill Pennywise (the rest he was going to keep to himself for the time being). They all crushed the heart of Pennywise together and then clambered out from the cistern as fast as they possibly could. As soon as they ran out into the fresh, open air of Neibolt Street, they yelled and whooped, high on adrenaline and disbelief.</p>
<p>Bev suggested they go to the quarry and they all ran there, laughing. They started leaping off the cliff down into the dirty water below without a care in the world. Richie and Eddie happened to be the last 2 to go, but right before Richie went to jump, Eddie grabbed his arm and told him “I think I’ve been in love with you my whole life,” in a way that sounded like he had just realised the moment he said it. But before Richie could even begin to process what Eddie had just told him, Eddie was gone, launching himself over the edge of the cliff without a care in the world.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>I've got a tight grip on reality<br/>
But I can't let go of what's in front of me here</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eddie had always been a very careful person, calculating every decision before he made it. That was why he had become a risk analyst in the first place, because it fit with everything else he believed about himself and how he lived his life. But there was always one exception to this rule and this exception was Richie fucking Tozier. The boy who made him feel brave enough to turn his back on his own mother, the boy who made the most impulsive decisions that Eddie always followed along with, and the man who made Eddie confess his love to him by just existing.  </p>
<p>When Eddie threw the spear at Pennywise, all he could think and feel were his instincts telling him to save Richie over and over and over again. And then Richie had saved his life and then saved <em>all </em>of their lives by telling them exactly how to kill Pennywise (and Eddie was absolutely going to ask him more about whatever he had seen in the deadlights because how could he possibly know what to do). The Losers had won but for some reason Eddie was overpowered by thoughts of Richie and how brave and strong he had made him feel. But there was also something else, something he couldn’t quite reach until he instinctually grabbed Richie’s arm and looked into his eyes. That was moment he realised it was <em>love</em>, real, unconditional love that he had been feeling since he was young. And he told Richie as much before he could even think of the consequences and subsequently launched himself off of a cliff to avoid him.</p>
<p>His mind finally came back to him once he had actually plunged into the water. He remembered how disgusting this water must be, his hypochondriac instincts instilled in him by his mother flaring up once again. He strategically avoided Richie’s gaze not wanting to see just in case what he was feeling just in case it's awful.</p>
<p>Schrodinger’s Love Confession: if doesn’t know how Richie feels, he can’t be hurt by it.</p>
<p>But the thing is, he’s not sure he wants Richie to reciprocate his love. It would completely implode his entire reality. He knows that the Richie Tozier Exception to the careful way he lived his life would cause him to uproot everything in his life just to be with him. And that thought fucking <em>terrifies </em>him. He would have to pop the safe bubble he created for himself in New York and even if he rationally knows that Myra is an almost carbon copy version of is mother, that type of love is all he understands.</p>
<p>But then he looks at Richie, and as soon as they lock eyes Richie grins at him and Eddie’s heart fills with warmth and affection and <em>love </em>and with startling clarity he thinks “yeah, he’s worth it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>I know your leaving in the morning, when you wake up<br/>
Leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream, oh</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>When the fight with Pennywise is over and the Losers finally come down from their adrenaline high, they get one more piece of news that none of them were expecting. It comes in the form of a phone call from Atlanta, Georgia, from one Patty Uris. She tells them all that Stan was in critical condition with almost no chance of survival when Beverly had called a couple days ago, and Patty was trying to be realistic when she told them that he had died. But after being put in a medically induced coma as a last-ditch chance at his survival he had suddenly and miraculously woken up a couple of hours ago in a completely stable condition. The Losers had huddled around the phone and cried as they heard Stan’s voice through the receiver telling them how sorry he was, how his fear had completely overtaken him and he truly believed that the Losers couldn’t win with him there. They all assured him over and over that they don’t blame him and were going to come and visit as soon as they possibly could.  </p>
<p>Then, they all left to go and collapse into bed, absolutely exhausted from the day they had without the energy and adrenaline from before. This finally allowed Richie and Eddie a moment alone to talk about what Eddie had said at the top of the quarry.</p>
<p>“Did you mean it?” Richie asked earnestly once they were alone in his room, “please say you did because I don’t think I could take it if you didn’t,” he said putting far more of his emotions out into the room than he had meant to.</p>
<p>“Of course I fucking meant it,” Eddie retaliated, “you think I just go around confessing my lifelong love for just anyone?” Richie laughed, only Eddie would sound mad when confessing his love for someone. But then it properly hit him, Eddie <em>loved </em>him, Eddie loved him <em>back</em>. All of feelings that he’d been holding back since he was a child were finally allowed to spill free.</p>
<p>He stepped closer to Eddie and cupped his face in his hands. Richie looked right into those big, brown eyes, “I love you” he said, being more honest than he’d probably ever been in his entire life, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he repeated until he was too choked up to get the words out. Tears were falling down his cheeks and he had to look incredibly unattractive in that moment, but Eddie still stared right at him. Eddie gently took Richie’s hands off of his face before rising up onto his toes and looping his arms around Richie’s neck, bringing their lips together.</p>
<p>Realistically, it wasn’t a <em>good </em>kiss. Richie was still crying and neither of them were quite sure what they were meant to be doing or how far the other wanted to go, eventually leading to Eddie breaking it off after a few good seconds. But despite all that, it was still the best damn kiss of Richie’s life.</p>
<p>In that moment, Richie was happier than he’d ever been and because of that, part of his mind was screaming at him telling him it can’t be real. That surely he’s still in the deadlights and this is all a dream because it is absolutely too good to be true. But he decided that even if it was just a dream, he never wanted to wake up.  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>In just a few days, Eddie had imploded his entire life. He returned to New York with a freshly healing scar in his cheek and told Myra he was gay and wanted a divorce. This went about as well as he expected which is to say, not well at all. She cried and screamed and told him he was making the biggest mistake of his life. That he didn’t know what he was talking about and had been brainwashed by his trip to Maine. Eddie just laughed and told her that he was thinking more clearly than he had in years. He packed up all of his things and was shocked by how little he actually owned. The majority of things he shared in his apartment with Myra were things she wanted and he couldn’t care less about. He managed to fit his entire life into 4 suitcases and left Myra before she could try and gaslight him into staying any longer.</p>
<p>Next, Eddie went to his work and immediately resigned. Sure, it wasn’t the safe choice for him financially, but he honestly did not care. Richie had enough money for the both of them while he got himself back on his feet. He drove to the airport feeling lighter than he had in years and bought an exorbitantly expensive last-minute plane ticket before sitting himself down in an uncomfortable airport chair and waited.</p>
<p>Richie had flown back to LA directly at Eddie’s insistence that he wanted to go back home alone. Soon enough, Eddie met him there. Eddie saw him in the crowd of waiting friends and family holding a white piece of paper with the words ‘Eddie Spaghetti’ scrawled across it in Richie’s chicken scratch. He rolled his eyes but still hugged him fiercely. He suppressed the urge to kiss Richie, wary of the fact that Richie was still technically a celebrity and that there are cameras everywhere.</p>
<p>They had immediately fallen back into old banter and routines when Eddie moved in and everything just felt so <em>easy</em>. Richie was a naturally messy person while Eddie was a neat freak, they shouldn’t have been compatible living in the same house. But they made it work, because it was them and they knew each other better than anyone. Eddie allowed himself to let go of some of his neuroses that had been building up in him for his entire adult life. He no longer felt restrained to a routine like he had when he was married to Myra, he could do whatever he wanted.</p>
<p>He did everything that people said your 20s were for. He finally felt free to explore what he liked and didn’t like. He tried as many foods as he could think of, trying to break the mental barriers that believing he had allergies for decades had instilled in him. He went out and explored the city (and even tried clubbing once and immediately decided that he hated it and never wanted to go again). And most importantly, he retaught himself what it meant to be in love.</p>
<p>He no longer allowed himself to believe that love is smothering, that relationships and sex are just a chore that everyone pretends to enjoy. Instead, he relearnt what it meant to be free and have fun in the way Richie taught him when they were teenagers. He laughs more in the first few months of living in LA than he had in the past 20 years, and he couldn’t be happier.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception<br/>
You are, the only exception</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>For his entire life, Richie had always been afraid. Afraid of being gay, afraid of everybody abandoning him, afraid of dying alone. But now, for the first time that he can remember, he doesn’t feel afraid anymore. He has Eddie and Eddie knows that Richie is in love with him, and against all odds, Eddie loves him back.</p>
<p>He went through his entire adult life terrified of anybody knowing he was gay. Nobody was worth the risk of coming out, because none of them were Eddie. Eddie is the only person in the entire world that makes Richie feel brave because Eddie always seems so scared of doing anything but then does it anyway. Everybody his entire life told him that he couldn’t do anything, that he was too weak, too sick, but then Richie gets to watch Eddie do something like eat one of the hottest peppers in the world just to prove that he’s not as weak as he was told. He blew up his entire life because of <em>Richie</em>, something Richie cannot understand. He doesn’t know why Eddie thinks he’s worth it, he just knows that he’s the luckiest man alive that Eddie thinks he is.</p>
<p>Richie got a front row seat to Eddie completely changing his entire life, doing anything he wanted to do. And it was honestly the most inspirational thing Richie has ever seen. That’s why, almost 6 months after Derry, Richie was lying in bed next to a sleeping, completely fucked out Eddie (side note: was no-one going to tell him that sex was better when you don’t hate yourself while you’re doing it?) and he just felt so brave and full of love that he made one of the most impulsive decisions of his life.</p>
<p>He pulled out his phone, opened Twitter, and without talking to anyone about it, just tweeted:</p>
<p>“Btw I’m gay and have been using ghostwriters for years. Fuck everything I’ve said up until now”</p>
<p>He shut down his phone, he was going to deal with the fall out of his actions in the morning. For now, he had plans to cuddle with the love of his life.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>And I'm on my way to believing </em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>A lot has changed in Eddie’s life since returning to Derry. Actually, scratch that, <em>everything </em>has changed, and it was the best thing to ever happen to him. But the most important thing, is that he has finally learned what real, healthy, happy love looks like. There are not enough words in the English language to express his gratitude to Richie for teaching him. So instead, every single day he makes sure to tell Richie he loves him, at least once (but usually its many more). And whenever he does, he’s actually saying “thank you for making me feel free and teaching me what love is”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em><br/>
Oh, and I'm on my way to believing. </em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Richie has always had so much love to give and he has finally felt brave enough to make sure everybody in the world knows about it. He loves Eddie more than he thinks anyone in the world loves another person and he needs Eddie to know this. So whenever he can, he makes sure to tell Eddie he loves him, and what he’s actually saying is “you’re my favourite person in the entire world, thank you for making me feel brave and showing me that I don’t have to be alone anymore”</p>
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